"BRYANT, Edward - Prairie Sun (v1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

John flushed. Droos stowed the packet of silver and extracted a crystal loop-and-petal candlestick from a crate. "I'm truly sorry," said John. "I never should have spoken at all"
Very slowly, Micah said, "Father used to tell me, `I help my friends; God help my enemies."'
"We're not your enemies," said John earnestly. "There are simply rules that say we cannot be the friends we'd wish."
Micah said nothing. He only turned and, picking up both the dead snake and the muzzle-loader that leaned
against a free-standing gilt mirror in its hardwood frame, walked away from the two men.
Micah distractedly shot the rabbit on the way back to the wagon. The big jack darted from the brush, and then made the mistake of pausing to assess the intruder on the plains. The ball passed cleanly through its right eye. The meat was unspoiled.
When the boy arrived at the wagon, the sun was long past its zenith. The oxen looked up incuriously to greet him, then bent their heavy heads back to the tough grass. Micah paused by the rear of the wagon.
"Ma?" he said. "I have a snake and a rabbit, Ma."
His mother drew the canvas flap aside and held a finger to her lips. "Hush," she said. "Your sister is dying." The gay colors of her gingham stood in stark contrast to the somber gray of the canvas top.
They waited an hour, then a second hour beside the small bed, listening to Annie's labored breathing. They took turns squeezing new compresses for the girl's forehead. Every few minutes, Micah took the bucket to the river for fresh, cold water.
Annie's face continued to shine with sweat, even with the compresses. At the same time, she shook as though with a chill, and they kept her bundled in her mother's hand-loomed blankets.
Finally the breathing stopped. Mother and brother waited minutes in the sudden stillness. Micah started to touch his mother's shoulder. She shook his hand aside. "Let me be alone," she said. Slowly she unwound the fine wool blankets and took up her daughter's body in her arms. Without words, she stepped down from the wagon and walked through the cottonwood and box elder toward
the river's edge.
Micah stood in the rear of the wagon and watched her go. The thought reverberated in his mind: what sort of people would allow a child to die this way? What form of Christian charity would let his sister perish in such a fashion?
He realized he simply did not know.
After what seemed a long, long time, Micah emptied his mother's most prized possession, the finely carved sandalwood chest, and repacked it.
The two men who claimed to be from the future were a half-mile further down the trail from where they had met with Micah. They were still rummaging through the heaps of abandoned goods, apparently working their way toward Missouri.
Scrub cottonwoods, sage, a dusty draw, juts of porous stone, the wagon ruts themselves, all lent Micah cover. The boy knew that an Indian would have discerned him in a moment. But John and Droos had no such skills. For the second time, but for only a moment, Micah truly wondered what it was like in the future. Then his mind told him once again that such speculation was an impossible luxury, and he bent all his effort to remaining undiscovered.
For two or three seconds he actually stood in full view had they only looked up. But both men were apparently absorbed in examining a bulky contraption of legs and drawers. Micah set the sandalwood chest down in the dust, strategically in sight only a few yards beyond the men. Then he melted back into the country's natural cover.
In a few minutes Micah reappeared, walking down the
slope toward John and Droos and making no effort at concealment. The two men were looking over a William and Mary highboy, touching the smooth finish, sliding the drawers in and out, checking the joints. "Note the lacquered Chinese detail," said Droos. "Though not actually executed by Oriental artisans, the figures are Chinese in both feeling and technique." Buried in his task, he did not look up to see why John had not responded until Micah stood before them both.
The boy's face was coated with dust; his eyes felt like burnt holes in a mask. He tasted prairie grit and would have spat out the dirt, but he no longer had the saliva.
John sounded unsure and awkward. "Hello, Micah. Welcome back. We were just preparing to-leave. Our time is almost up."
Micah looked from one to the other steadily. He had to start the words several times because of the dry rasp in his throat. "You still would do nothing for my sister?"
"We can do nothing," said Droos. "We come from a quite different world, Micah. There are things we must not do. There are rules."
Micah turned his gaze to John. John finally stared at the ground and nodded agreement. "Very well," the boy said, sounding tired and much older than his thirteen years. The men looked at him warily.
"I truly am sorry," said John.
Micah said nothing. Nor did he answer any other entreaty made by either of the men. He retreated to sit on a wooden crate that held mining tools and simply watched them.
"We'd best get back to work," said Droos, checking something on his wrist. With redoubled energy, the two men again busied themselves among the debris. Every once in a while they looked at Micah. The boy remained
stationary on the box.
"A swirl bottle!" said Droos. "A second!"
"This looks like a Pennsylvania Dutch door hanging," said John.
"A full set of eighteenth-century sextant gear."
"Another Roosevelt teapot."
"What's this?" John hunkered down beside the sandalwood chest.
"What extraordinary workmanship," said Droos, also bending over the chest. "Absolutely gorgeous." His fingertips ran eagerly over the inlaid panels. Then he raised the flat lid and said, "Oh yes, yes indeed." Drawing the contents from the chest, he said, "Shetland?"
"Looks like it," said John.
And loomed by my mother's hand, thought Micah, but spoke no word aloud.
Droos again inspected his wrist and said, "Damn! It's almost over. You attach a tracer to the chest. I'll finish up the rest."
Their departure was not dramatic.
"Ten seconds," said Droos, adjusting something at his belt.
John at least spoke to Micah. "Good-bye," he said, offering a slow, sad wave of his hand. "I'm sorry, Micah."
Both men simply were gone. As though they had never existed. Micah watched as all up and down the trail, objects vanished. Crates and bags melted into the air. The massive William and Mary highboy disappeared. Finally his mother's sandalwood chest vanished too, and along with it, the fine hand-loomed blanket of good Shetland wool, the blankets that had kept his sister from the frontier cold these past nights.
Micah stood then, and hoped his mother was waiting for him at the wagon. The chest and blankets were gone.
They had left him there to stand sweating in the prairie sun; in a plain of near-absolute stillness, hushed but no longer expectant; a plain on which, it seemed to him, anything at all could happen. And it had.